


reputation

by Silver_Lady



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: BAMF Chin Ho Kelly, BAMF Danny "Danno" Williams, BAMF Hawaii Five-0, BAMF Kono Kalakaua, BAMF Steve McGarrett, Danny is done with Steve's shit, Five-0 documentary, Gen, Lou Grover is a good Bro, Meta, Steve McGarrett & Danny "Danno" Williams Friendship, Team as Family, the bad guys fear McGarrett
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:09:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25071433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silver_Lady/pseuds/Silver_Lady
Summary: People soon learned that attempting to get to McGarrett through the people he cared about was just like unleashing a nuclear attack
Relationships: Chin Ho Kelly & Steve McGarrett, Kono Kalakaua & Chin Ho Kelly & Steve McGarrett & Danny "Danno" Williams, Kono Kalakaua & Steve McGarrett, Lou Grover & Chin Ho Kelly & Steve McGarrett & Danny "Danno" Williams, Lou Grover & Steve McGarrett, Steve McGarrett & Danny "Danno" Williams, Steve McGarrett & Danny "Danno" Williams & Kono Kalakaua & Chin Ho Kelly & Lou Grover
Comments: 4
Kudos: 61





	reputation

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this a few days before i watched the H50 finale but didn't post it, so here it is, weeks late. Hope you enjoy.

When the Five-0 task force first formed the only people who knew about it were HPD and the Governor’s staff. Oh there was a big announcement with a press conference made about the task force and what they would do but to the average Joe that meant little. Regular people soon forgot about it and went about their day.

But then time passed and cases were closed and solved and slowly Five-0 started gaining a reputation.

People would hear stories, some embellished, some not, about Five-0 and its members and while some complained most of them thought it was a good thing. It helped that his father was known as a straight cop and a good man. It helped that Steve grew up on the island so he was mindful of their culture (even if he took a haole for a partner).

The criminal underground on the island was terrified of McGarrett for starters. They spoke of him in hushed voices afraid that they would summon him and his wrath. While the bosses wouldn’t admit it, because they had a reputation to uphold, no one wanted to garner the attention of the former Navy SEAL. Those that died had it easy, a gunshot here and there and BAM they were free, but those that survived spoke of men in shark tanks, on the hood of the car while driving recklessly through the streets of Oahu. Of men dangled from buildings to gain intel, of doors blown wide with grenades, cars being driven onto ships and of McGarrett grinning down on them like the devil himself.

Those things are all true. But like all legends word of mouth is not really reliable so every story comes with its own embellishments.

Someone, the record lost the name of the poor shmuck, tried to bribe McGarrett to leave his operation alone. The only thing that could be heard for miles was laughter and some irrelevant goons said McGarrett’s eyes glowed. Nobody believed them of course but nobody tried to bribe him from here on out.

Then somebody tried to kidnap someone close to him to shut him up. Considering that his family was largely in the ground and his sister was on the mainland they tried to grab one of his team mates. And because they were stupid they went after what they thought was the weakest link. Namely Officer Kalakaua. Big mistake. The goons sent to take her ended up unconscious in the ER with several broken bones and woke up with McGarrett grinning above them. There would have been quite a mess made by our perps but the good doctors from the emergency department had taken care of that problem with catheters in places that no man wants a catheter placed. The boss who thought could bargain with McGarrett with the lives of his team ended up in a psychiatric ward mumbling about devils and demons.

After the failed attempt of kidnapping Officer Kalakaua someone had the bright idea going after Lieutenant Chin Ho Kelly. Chin let himself be kidnapped out of boredom, that was during a slow week at the office, only to escape and incapacitate the whole goon squad in less than an hour. The boss surrendered immediately when the rest of Five-0 showed up. Chin left the warehouse smirking and let Steve buy the beer that night (by that he means that Danny bought it because Steve forgot his wallet, as usual).

The less said about the attempted kidnapping of one Detective Williams the better. Not only was Det. Williams all the time with McGarrett but when some goons finally gained a break and managed to incapacitate him and grab him, they regretted every criminal thing they ever did in their life. Williams managed in 30 minutes what no prison ever did, simply by talking. He talked and talked and talked until the shmucks wanted to shoot themselves. When McGarret showed up and started shooting and throwing grenades at them they accepted their fate and went quietly. The next time someone attempted to kidnap one Detective Williams they tried gagging him to no success. Everybody learned to steer clear of the Detective after that.

One ambitious criminal and some stupid goons tried to grab Commander McGarrett. McGarrett took out the first team that tried to kidnap him and let the second one grab him, because again slow week at the office. What followed was nothing short of a horror movie. When the rest of the Five-0 task force arrived at the warehouse where they were holding the Commander, all the goons and the boss were either dead or unconscious while McGarrett was grinning like a loon. He chastised his team, good-naturedly, for taking so long in finding him.

The criminal underworld of the island soon learned it was easier to just shoot themselves rather than attempt to take and ransom one of the task force.

People soon learned that attempting to get to McGarrett through the people he cared about was just like unleashing a nuclear attack if a nuclear attack had the thousand yard focus of a Navy SEAL that was build from stubbornness and had no rules when the situation called for it. That was if they managed to get through the team of highly trained and crazy people that made up the Five-0 task force, in the first place.

They were both loved and hated by the people. Loved because they did everything in their power to right the wrongs did to them by criminals. Loved because they knew if they had a problem Five-0 would do anything under the sun and beyond to help them. Loved because beneath the crazy stunts and a shoot first ask questions later policy the people of Hawaii knew they were as safe as they could be. Because they had Five-0 behind them. So many cases started with people coming to HQ and pleading their case, asking, begging for help. The Five-0 task force took every case personal, each one relating to the victims in their own way.

Steve was a natural disaster in every case but throw in parents or kids and the whole rulebook, that was never consulted anyway, would be thrown out the window with a vengeance. His laser focused stare would dial up even more, to the dismay of his partner who would start praying to the Gods he didn’t believe in.

Danny was more professional than Steve, having been a detective for many years and able to detach himself from cases but add a case about kids in and every rule he had about how police men worked would be burned and thrown away. The fact that he was a father didn’t matter. He had been a big brother before he was a father and watching pictures of children dead or in pain always made his vision go red (it has nothing to do with the fact that he imagines Grace in their stead).

Chin hates the cases when someone is accused based solely on circumstantial evidence. He is always the cop that double and triple checks a suspect before making an accusation. He is the first to doubt whether they have the right guy or not. That doesn’t make him a bad cop. He just likes to make sure that the person they accuse of a crime is the right one. His firing from HPD left scars that not even Five-0 can heal. It hurts sometimes that no one on the force, people he had worked with for years never questioned his case. On the bad days he sits on the porch, drink in hand, bitterness in his throat and laments of the fact that he didn’t have Steve then.

Steve who doesn’t trust until he does and then that trust can’t be broken. Chin knows that he could be found over a dead body, gun in hand and Steve would still believe him when he says he didn’t do it. Bitterness threatens to swallow him but then Steve shows up, pours himself a drink and just sits there. They don’t speak and the next day everything is business as usual but the nights are easier and slowly the bitterness and fury fades.

Kono is angry. She is filled with fire and gasoline and is the most like Steve than any other. Her sense of right and wrong is strong and the fury she feels while on a case fuel her. Her determination and desire to rid the island of criminals is what got her through the academy when everyone was shaking their head at her and expecting her to fail. Her friends from the academy stop talking to her after she makes it big, after she’s accepted into Five-0 with only a week away from graduating and at first it hurts. It hurts and she refuses to think about that. She’s good. She has Five-0, who becomes ohana but people talk. The news only focus on her dismal appearance after a week-long case when she only slept like 10 hours, they focus on her past as a surfer, objectifying her and ignore that she went through the academy, that she has the training from the best of the best.

They focus on her cousin and his past and Kono nearly shatters her pitiful TV when she sees that segment. They focus on her love life and when that proves to be a bust (because with the hours she spends at work nobody has time for a love life) they start talking about how she must be fucking one of her bosses. Oh they don’t come right out and say it but they heavily imply it. That is a miserable day until Steve gets wind of the reportage and storms the news station. They try to run circles around him for a few minutes before one assistant nearly pisses himself and Steve calls the Governor. After that the only news about her are about her role on cases and they are a clinical review with nothing being embellished. The rumors about her sleeping with her bosses die down somewhat, there are still those on the force that think that she got her job on her knees but she ignores those.

She proves herself and doesn’t stop pushing until she is viewed as equal to every man on the force. Kono may not have gotten her job by usual means, may haven’t walked the beat but she is just as capable and she has Danny and Steve and her cousin to thank for that.

The Five-0 task force is hated because while they do good things, because of their immunity and means and a leader that only answers to his partner on the good days, they rampage through the island with no thought of who stands in their way. Danny may grumble and rant about proper police procedure but even he knows that Steve’s way of ignoring the rules is efficient. There are countless times when Steve pulls a crazy plan out of his ass and Danny has to pick up the pieces but at the end of the day the criminals are in custody, the plots are averted and Danny is grateful that the island is a safer place for his little girl.

A year after the task force is formed and after Governor Jameson’s death, Governor Denning approves the making of a documentary about their best and brightest. That’s the preaching line anyway but everyone knows that the documentary is about the Five-0 task force. What follows are a few months of complete madness. Two directors quit along with five camera men but eventually the documentary is made.

It focuses on the lives and jobs of the first responders but prominently Five-0 is featured along with SWAT, HPD and the EMTs. The documentary features interviews with everybody who comes into contact with Five-0 and because of that it has to be rated R because of the amount of swearing and gore involved.

The Chief of Police spends ten minutes swearing at McGarrett when interviewed before finally answering questions. Duke Lukela and his coworkers have only praise to say about the team and their work. It’s one of the most honest and tear inducing moments of the documentary.

The SWAT team only says that Five-0 always has their back in the field before the Captain intervenes. He spends the next 15 minutes explaining in depth how McGarrett is a crazy son of bitch that pulls the most insane stunts in trying to apprehend a suspect but he is a crazy son of a bitch that you want to have backing you up.

The EMT department laugh when asked about Five-0 but finally one Ryan Smith, an EMT for nearly 15 years, calms down and starts telling the crew about what they want to know. What follows is nearly an hour of stories of McGarrett ignoring medical advice and going off half-cocked with barely any back-up available to apprehend suspects. About midway through Emilia Jenkins, a new hire, pulls out a phone and treats the documentary people to a video of Ryan patching up McGarrett of a bullet wound and Detective Williams ranting in the background, only to cut to footage of McGarrett dragging a half conscious Chin Ho Kelly out of a burning building while the rest of the team shoot at perps. Detective Danny Williams is ranting about crazy partners and rules throughout the whole thing. The last image is of the Commander being dragged to an ambulance by a pissed off Detective.

The documentary people are floored. They spend the day interviewing all the people from the EMTs who came into contact with McGarrett and gain nearly three whole hours of footage of McGarrett injured and then saving the day. One assistant pukes when she watched the video of McGarrett popping his shoulder back in place, ignoring the ambulance at his back, only to then go back inside the building and walk back out ten seconds before it explodes. The newly hired director, a former reporter who spent her youth chasing disasters around the world, rubs her hands in glee.

Because EMTs are closely connected with the Emergency Department the director goes and interviews a few doctors from the ED. What follows is a blow up of great proportion as nearly every doctor and nurse on rotation gathers to rat out McGarrett and his team.

The only footage of that day that remain in the documentary is one of Dr Elizabeth Black, an ER resident of three years, who speaks of McGarrett with the tone of someone resigned to the inevitability of certain death. Dr Black is one of the few people capable of treating his team without gaining an aneurysm because she accepts the fact that no matter what she says, short of drugging them all, the task force will not follow her instructions. So she resigned herself to McGarrett coming to her ER and not listening to a word she says. She is also the only doctor who, when faced with McGarrett’s wrath, when one of his team is injured, will not devolve in a puddle of tears in fright. When asked why, the doctor only shrugs and says, “My father was a cop.”

The other footage is of Nurse Jack Tyler, a native to Hawaii and a person who faces McGarrett with an iron forged will, made by dealing with difficult patients and families. He doesn’t say much but agrees with Dr Black and only laughs when asked on how he can deal with the Commander.

Next the documentary people shadow the task force and while the director is ecstatic that the task force catches a case, the rest of the team is not. What follows is hell for the people working on the documentary, who aren’t used to car chases or shoot outs or the threat of impeding death.

The director is in her element and when the camera man drops his camera to take cover from the bullets flying about his head, the director, a five foot something woman named Sam Dresden, picks up the camera and captures the whole thing. She gets grazed with a bullet and spends some time chatting with Ryan but in her perspective it’s worth it. Detective Williams rants a bit and the Commander smirks but the footage is intact and that’s priceless.

Samantha is also there to capture footage of Commander McGarrett jumping from container to container before finally launching himself at the suspect and falling a few feet on top of the fugitive. She also captures footage of the fifteen minute rant that Detective Williams aimed at his partner following this stunt.

Last they interview the members of Five-0. They had waited until the end to do so to avoid bias but by then the director has a good idea of what makes Five-0.

They start with Officer Kono Kalakaua and her interview goes smoothly. She is used to people asking her questions from her days as a surfer so she breezes through it. Her interview is mingled with footage of Officer Kalakaua in the middle of a raid, shouting orders and taking down suspects, whilst protecting civilians. The director asks her why she became a cop and it takes a few minutes for the Officer to answer. She talks about growing up in her family and seeing the good and bad things of the life and how that affected her. “Maybe if I hadn’t started surfing first, I would have joined the academy even earlier. We’ll never know,” she finishes with a wink.

Next is Lieutenant Chin Ho Kelly, who is slightly uncomfortable but answers with a mask of professionalism and wins the hearts of assistants with his warm smile. The director has been warned and advised to not ask about the investigation and his subsequent firing from HPD unto pain of death. So they stay clear of that subject (because while Sam certainly has some marbles loose she is not crazy enough to go against the Commander). His interview is smooth and simple.

Afterwards is Detective Daniel Williams and what follows is a nearly two hour rant on how Commander Steve McGarrett is an asshole who doesn’t know the rules that govern humans. The director lets the editors deal with that mess, and redirects the questions towards his past as a cop in New Jersey.

Last but not least they interview Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett and his answers are short and to the point. He smiles when asked why does he do this job, making both men and women melt, his icy façade falling and answers simply, “Because someone has too.”

All in all, the director is happy and when a few months later when the documentary goes online, there is not a Hawaiian who doesn’t watch it. A few weeks later the documentary goes worldwide and several countries start installing their own task force.

By then everyone has heard of the Five-0 task force. And while they may occasionally blow stuff up in their pursuit, the people love them.

So, when Detective Williams is pinned down by a pair of suspects in a corner, with no rounds left in his magazine, a pair of young men jump out from nowhere and strike the suspects with a bat and a pipe. Danny thanks them, while also admonishing them softly to never put themselves in that kind of danger, cuffs the perps and goes to find his missing partner.

Weeks later McGarrett is concussed and being dragged into a van when a whole family jumps on the bad guys and beat them into submission. He wakes up confused, while an old lady is smoothing down his hair and yelling at her grandson to, “Call the cops already.” He doesn’t really remember this encounter but when months later the old lady slams her purse over a perps head so he could take the shot without endangering the hostage, he remembers her sweet smile and comforting words.

Kono is saved by a teenage girl throwing her, her fallen gun. After she takes down the bad guys the girl nods at her and disappears. Kono smiles and nudges one of the perps awake.

Chin is alerted to trouble by one of his neighbors flagging him down before he could pull in his drive way. His door is ajar and what would be a painful trip to the ER (or worse) was averted when he entered his house, gun at the ready and shooting the guys that wanted to make an example of him.

These kinds of little things don’t stop. People all over the island and beyond help the task force in whatever way they can. They are small things in the grand scheme of things, but they help and they make Five-0’s job slightly easier.

Five-0 takes care of the island and the people take care of them. There is hardly any bar or establishment that accepts the team’s money these days so they have each come up with a competition to see who can be the subtlest in paying (Kono is winning, to absolutely no one’s surprise).

Captain Lou Grover is an odd addition to the Five-0 task force (who isn’t?). At first it seems like McGarrett would sooner declare a blood feud than be able to work with Grover without yelling being involved. But time passes and nearly two years after coming to Hawaii, and a year after joining Five-0 Grover would find himself in a hospital hallway trying to think of when exactly did he start to warm up to the idea of Steve. Maybe the beginning of the Ian Wright case? When they were forced to work together by the Governor. Possibly.

What he knows, what he can see clearly is Steve’s willingness to walk into an armed to the teeth community with him to save his daughter and being there all the way after when the world is still shaky under his feet. Later, when his daughter stops flinching at shadows and starts being angry, he goes to Steve and Steve comes at an ungodly hour every morning to show Samantha the best moves to take someone down.

Now, sitting in a stupid ass plastic chair that clearly was made with midgets in mind, and waiting, hoping, praying that Steve makes it. Because the world would be a bleaker one without McGarrett in it. He sinks down in the stupid chair, knees weak when the doctor comes and tells them the good news. Grover is man enough to admit that he cries and then he claps Chin on the back, Kono pulls them all into a hug and laughs while muttering about stubborn bosses who will never die.

When he finally has the proof to add murder to Clive’s charges it doesn’t even occur to him to call somebody else. While Steve’s simple response of “Seeing you in Chicago” doesn’t register with him in the moment, later when he is alone with his thoughts and a beer, he will think about that and smile. Because that response sums up McGarrett the most. The man willing to drop everything and come help a friend, even if it involves hours spent in a metal death trap, flying, and then arguing with the DA, on his behalf.

And the less said about the situation with the reporter the better. Lou had hoped to have Steve as back up but he was also a realist and had expected to be able to deal with it on its own. So, when Steve declared his full support, something that seemed frozen inside him, ever since that horrible night in Chicago, had started to thaw.

Grover doesn’t know when he started to warm up to McGarrett, but now, watching him annoy Danny from a hospital bed, he knows he wouldn’t have any other way.

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe i'm going to continue it with Tani, Junior etc but for that i have to re-watch the series because i don't have a really good grasp on those characters. We'll see when my muse strikes me.


End file.
